Too true
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 19:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
“The Democrats have a habit of going for the capillaries.” — organizer at an antiwar planning meeting.
Archive for March, 2007
Global warming is already causing major damage
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 18:51 - Category: Climate change ;
Climate change is already threatening vital infrastructure such as road and rail networks, water and energy systems and healthcare, and the damage will worsen, the world’s leading climate scientists [at IPCC] will warn [on Friday]
Check MetOffice.gov.uk, a UK government site aimed at helping businesses cope with, adapt to, and understand global. They are light years ahead of the US government on this. While Dubya and the others in the Flat Earth Society lie, evade, and distort facts, the British government is actively helping businesses deal with climate change, as are most governments on the planet.
Meankids and Kathy Sierra
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 09:37 - Category: Unfiled ;
So someone starts a site, MeanKids, to deliberately bash another blogger, Kathy Sierra, then is shocked, just shocked, when the bashing gets vicious. Spare me the bullshit. What happened is precisely what they encouraged to happen. Sierra ended up getting death threats and vile photoshopped images of her were posted. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
This is quite exactly like the small number of pro-war protestors on March 17 at the DC antiwar march and rally who spat on Iraq war veterans, insulted marchers carrying pictures of their children who’d been killed in combat, and screamed an unending stream of sexual insults at passing women. I’m sure Dubya must be proud of them as must be the assholes who started a site to deliberately attack a woman then sat back and let it spin out of control.
Pondscum all.
Bee population collapsing
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 00:23 - Category: Unfiled ;
The bee population in North American and Europe is crashing at an alarming rate. Bees pollinate plants, without them, there will be no crops. Causes for the population crash, which is up to 70% on the east coast of the US, appear to be the usual culprits; monoculture, pesticides, and GM crops.
This is genuinely scary stuff. Celsias has a series of in-depth articles that explain what’s happening.
Bees dying by the millions
Bee colony collapse disorder, where is it heading
European bees taking a nosedive
Predictably, governments are asleep at the wheel, and little research money is available. Can’t be having a little thing like a collapsing bee population interfere with agricultural companies making money.
Subprime mortgage collapse impact widespread
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 00:15 - Category: Credit crisis ;
Mortgage brokers New Century Financial and Ameriquest, both based in Orange County, California have cratered spectacularly and have laid off thousands of workers. But the pain goes way beyond just them. Multiple other businesses like car dealers and restaurants are reporting drastically less income, condo prices in the area are down 17% since June, and office vacancy rates will double this year.
“It’s a huge engine that has been shut off,” McDermott said. “I don’t know where the new influx of jobs are if you take the lending market out of the equation.”
So, lots of people who weren’t even involved in subslime mortgages are getting hurt by this latest example of the boom-bust cycle of capitalism.
California being warmed by urbanization
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2007 00:08 - Category: Climate change ;
This on top of global warming…
“Exhaust from the SUV is just piling on,” he said. “One is heating you from above, the other is heating you from below.”
Urbanized areas do not cool at night as well as land in its natural state,
This is no doubt happening in other urban areas too.
Subprime racism
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2007 00:23 - Category: Credit crisis ;
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from 2005 reveal that more than 50 percent of black and 46 percent of Latino home buyers received subprime loans, compared to 17 percent of white borrowers. Many of the minority borrowers could have qualified for more favorable terms.
Exploiting the poor and minorities has always been a favored way for the capitalist class to increase their wealth.
Many of those with subprime loans will, of course, be losing their homes, maybe even to the same pond scum who sold and funded the mortgages, who are now waiting for prices to drop so they can buy cheap.
The battered wife syndrome
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2007 00:15 - Category: Anti-war ;
Spanish island to be first in world powered completely by renewable energy
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2007 00:08 - Category: Renewable energy ;
It’ll be a mix of hydro and wind power.
Maybe one day, hopefully soon, lots of islands and towns will also be energy self-sufficient. Decentralization of power is coming, we will have multiple sources of energy generation, and they will be smaller and distributed widely. The political implications of this are obvious.
Chavez calls for united socialist party in Venezuela
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2007 13:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
Chávez said that they were beginning a new phase of the process and warned that the “deepening of the revolution is going to sharpen the contradictions,” both on a national and international level. For this reason he explained the urgency of a strong party, “because we are not going to stop the revolution,” he explained.
Red Squirrel’s Lair has more.
This must be that surge Dubya talked about
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2007 13:10 - Category: Unfiled ;
Attacks in Green Zone have increased to the level where “body armor and helmets would now be required for all ‘outdoor activities’ within the sprawling embassy complex, even short walks to the cafeteria.”
ANSWER Connecticut website launches
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2007 00:29 - Category: Anti-war ;
Check it out, ANSWERCT.org, the Connecticut Chapter of the ANSWER Coalition. It’s a new site, with lots more content coming real soon.
Protest Bush. May 23 - New London, CT
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2007 00:26 - Category: Anti-war ;
Bush will speak at the commencement ceremony of the Coast Guard Academy in New London CT on Wed. May 23. Join students, soldiers and veterans, impeachment and antiwar activists and many more to protest Bush’s visit.
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition CT Chapter.
To become a co-sponsor, get involved, or for updates call 203-404-9965 or check the new ANSWER CT website.
Let’s all start building this now and turn it into a major protest.
U.S. Out of Iraq Now!
From Iraq to New Orleans,
Fund People’s Needs, Not the War Machine
End Colonial Occupation: Iraq, Palestine, Haiti & everywhere.
Shut Down Guantanamo!
Country Joe has a new antiwar song
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2007 00:15 - Category: Anti-war ;
And check his website too, CountryJoe.com
S.F. to ban plastic grocery bags
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2007 13:27 - Category: Unfiled ;
Rule applies to shopping bags made from petroleum products
Proponent says ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil a year
Board of Supervisors votes yes, mayor likely to sign law
This was spearheaded by Green Party activist Ross Mikarimi, who is also a member of of the S.F. Board of Supervisors. Spread the meme about this great idea whose time has come.
Tip: Green Lisa
Tell Mama - Shawn Pander
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2007 00:23 - Category: Anti-war ;
Check this video of Tell Mama by country / folk singer Shawn Pander. It’s quite moving, from the point of view of a soldier in Iraq twelve days from shipping home. He’s seen too much blood, too much death, too many mangled friends, and doesn’t know if he can ever be the same again.
From the lyrics
I’m not the same
tell my darling little girl
daddy had to go away
I just couldn’t touch her face
using hands that I’ve killed with
Pander is donating all proceeds from the song the the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation, where I found this startling quote, given it’s on a highly patriotic site.
“When a family is about to be evicted while its breadwinner is defending our country, well, that’s reprehensible.”
- R. Lee Ermey
When the VFW is posting quotes like that, you know the populace is solidly opposing the war. Yet Congress continues to fund the war, even if Democrats pretend to oppose it with toothless resolutions. Meanwhile, US soldiers and Iraqis continue to be maimed and killed.
‘Tell Mama’ isn’t so much a political song, but more of a scream from the working class that the price they are paying, dead bodies and mangled, broken soldiers coming back from Iraq, is a price they can no longer pay.
Minutemen attack themselves
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2007 00:15 - Category: Immigrant rights ;
A California judge has ruled neither founder Jim Gilchrist nor three directors of the racist anti-immigrant Minutemen can have control of the group, citing “serious issues concerning the credibility of the claims of both Jim Gilchrist and the defendants…” Thus, the group is now immobilized, pending a full trial. The issue, not surprisingly, is “sloppy accounting and possible fundraising improprieties.”
In other Minutemen news, San Diego police searched the home of local Minutemen founder Jeff Schwilk looking for evidence linking him to vandalism attacks against migrant camps.
The busy Mr. Schwilk has also just been sued for one million dollars by Joanne Yoon, an ACLU contractor, citing his threatening, racist, sickening web posts and emails about her.
Think about Schwilk the next time you hear a Minutemen member lie about how they aren’t racist.
Now a judge thinks they may have been playing Hide The Money… Why am I not surprised?
Running out of coal?
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2007 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
We may be entering a period of peak coal, just like we are with peak oil. Which will be none to soon for this highly polluting and destructive abomination of an energy source, you ask me.
Living off the grid won’t help stop global warming
Bob Morris @ Mar 27th 2007 00:15 - Category: Climate change, Socialism ;
Is living off the grid a needed step forward or just an evasion, however well-meaning, of what really needs to be done.
So many liberal enviros won’t touch the ugly, hairy, 500 pound guerrilla in the room: Capitalism.
We have to be rational and realize these markers aren’t really all that revolutionary in the long run. They are only band aid approaches that make the brutal free market system more palatable to us folks with a pesky conscience.
So says Brickburner, in their post aptly titled No Impact? Exactly.
As long as short-sighted predatory capitalism, with its focus on profits above everything else including the health of the planet, is allowed to prevail, there can be no real remediation of global warming. A system that puts the well-being of all above profits is what’s needed.
Sure, I use CFLs not incandescents, recycle as much as possible and try to keep my carbon footprint low. But those are individual efforts and can’t replace the societal restructuring needed to stop climate change. To expect capitalists to put the long-term good ahead of this quarter’s profits is delusion.
Flip City. A picture is worth 1,000 words
Bob Morris @ Mar 27th 2007 00:12 - Category: Credit crisis ;
La Vida Vegas shows in excruciating photographic detail, just how badly the flip frenzy in Vegas has cratered (click the photo to view it full-sized)
The first electric sports car?
Bob Morris @ Mar 27th 2007 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
The ZAP-X will have 644 hp with a top speed of 155, and go 350 miles on a single charge. AND the charge will take a mere 10 minutes and cost just $3.50.
I want one…
A disgrace to Machiavelli
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2007 09:32 - Category: Unfiled ;
Andrew Sullivan explains why Karl Rove is no Machiavelli.
ANSWER CT meeting. What’s next for the anti-war movement
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2007 00:20 - Category: Anti-war ;
Tuesday March 27, 7 pm
ANSWER CT meeting
United Church on the Green Parish House
323 Temple St.
New Haven CT
map
- March 17 protest slideshow
- Protest reports from around the US
- Discuss upcoming anti-war actions
- Help build an independent anti-war movement
Mortgage death spiral
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2007 00:15 - Category: Credit crisis ;
AP has a clear, understandable article on subprime mortgages, focusing on a Colorado couple who is being foreclosed, primarily because their mortgage payments jumped up way high coupled with an auto accident that made the wife unable to work for six weeks. That’s important to note, foreclosures often start when someone can’t work because of sickness or injury, not because they’re deadbeats. But once the process starts, it’s a death spiral downwards.
Owners in trouble are living in homes that may be worth substantially less than they owe. They can’t sell or refinance. They are ensnared in loans whose costs keep rising.
And when they get behind on the mortgage payments, which may have had a balloon payment they didn’t know about, the interest rates on the loan gets raised. Um, if you can’t pay the loan at 7%, how can you possibly pay it at 12%? Yet that’s what happens under current loan shark subprime mortgages.
Why is this deliberate gouging of those least able to pay even legal? This is capitalism at its most exploitative, and is a deliberate transfer of money from the working class to the already wealthy. Mortgage brokers and Wall Street investment banks have made billions from subprime mortgages, and that money came from the working class, many of whom are now losing their homes.
Overview of wave power
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2007 00:08 - Category: Renewable energy ;
Celcias has an excellent post on the varieties of wave power. There’s enough ocean waves out there to power the planet and more, and it’s all renewable energy. All we need to do is start using it.
